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10 Dec 2016 2:56:20am

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I read a lot of books, and many are written by women. There have been many wonderful Australian authors, Thea Astley and Miles Franklin of course come quickly to mind, and two of the best contemporary authors, in my opinion, are Sonya Hartnett and the brilliant Jennifer Mills.

However, it seems to me that every argument your guest makes for the validity of a prize for women, which is in fact a prize that EXCLUDES men, has an equally valid opposite argument.

1. Aviva Tuffield stated "... when women write about families and relationships, it's seen as domestic fiction in some way, and when men do it, say Jonathon Franzen, it's a great work of literature, a masterpiece..."

Could not the same be said about, say, historical fiction, where Hilary Mantel is awarded two Booker Prizes for her work, yet men go unrecognised after writing about similar subjects?Oh, wait … Mantel wrote great books. Therefore Mantel won the prizes. Because she deserved to. Just as Franzen's work was the best of its type. No difference.

2. Aviva Tuffield states something about woman crime writers being told they should use their initials instead of their christian names because men who read crime are less likely to read their books if they know they were written by a female.

The same can be said of men writing in the romance genre, or indeed, the chick-lit genre, both of which are written mostly, but not exclusively, by women.

3. Aviva Tuffield states figures for research along the lines of 60% of fiction in the U.K being written by women. Notwithstanding that Australia is not the U.K, let us for a moment accept that these figures may be the same in Australia. Are we to believe that "literature" of the highly formulaic romance, or lightweight chick-lit variety is ever good enough to be eligible for serious prizes?And if we remove this lightweight writing from the pool, what percentage of literature is written by women as compared to men? I would guess that this would probably swing the pool back to around that 60/40 figure, but now in favour of men.

It is my opinion, and only an opinion — as I have been wrong many times before, just ask my lovely ex-wife — that when a woman writes the best book, the woman wins the prize. And it is also my opinion — and here of course I expect to be informed how wrong I am by hordes of women, women who will have no shortage of strong emotion, but present no facts — that prizes such as the Stella Prize, and the Orange Prize, are sexist.Surely they discriminate against men.All other major literary prizes are open to both genders, and are regularly won by both genders.The Stella and Orange, however, are — in my opinion — promoting bias against one gender, and this doesn't seem like a good thing to me, and I wouldn't like my son or daughters to be looking at the world and thinking this is how it should be.

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